Thursday, December 15, 2016

Whale Enters Chesapeake, Dies

The Coast Guard has issued a warning to mariners after receiving several reports about a dead whale in Virginia waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

The first call came in late Saturday morning from a pilot escorting a ship through the Rappahannock Channel, a major shipping lane in the southern part of the bay.

The Coast Guard issued a 24-hour marine safety warning, but received no more calls. Then Wednesday afternoon, someone else called in a whale sighting.

“This time it was approximately two miles north of Windmill Point,” according to Coast Guard spokesman Nate Littlejohn. “You can never really say exactly where the whale is because that’s constantly changing with the tide and the weather.”

It’s likely the same dead whale, but because the corpse is moving and no one can stay with it, the Virginia Aquarium said it is unable to send out its Stranding Response Team. When the whale beaches is when the team would be able to identify the type of whale and possibly determine how it died.

That would be horrible to run into in a small boat running at full speed, especially if it was at that lovely "exploding whale" stage: